Question

I’ve been all over the place looking for this. There are some answers out there but none of them work.

All I want to do is slowly move a div to the left when a user does a mouseover on a button.

This works to make the div move:

$("#myDiv").offset({left:-1000});

but all my attempts to animate the move cause the move itself to fail.

Answer 1

Use .animate() function like this

$("#myDiv").animate({ left: '-1000' });

Update:
Since your division is floated to the left, you can animate the property using marginLeft instead.

$("#myDiv").animate({ marginLeft: '-1000' });

Demo